>>1800615Winning contracts is not the same as a grift. Also the government gave more money to the competing but worse performing companies like boeing and lockheed for the same contract programs. The government is saving billions of dollars from using SpaceX rockets and they get a superior product.
>especially if it bears fruit in timeIt already has, the falcon 9 and dragon have done numerous flights to the ISS have launched so many government satellites like the landsat 9 and have given the us full control over their launches again. NASA would be using the soyuz to get their astronauts to space still and would be paying through the nose to get anemic payloads to space.
>That being said, at this point we have the body of Brunel's life of work to compare to Musk's work to date, and I consider the Great Western to have done more for humanity than getting some astronauts to the ISS with a method other than Soyuz and shitting a ton of cubesats into the orbital neighbourhoodMusk founded
X.com which became PayPal and PayPal was crucial to the rise of ecommerce. So already he was deeply involved in a company that impacted the lives of the average person around the world. Then you have Tesla which absolutely revolutionized the auto industry, has pushed the world to adopting EVs and has forced their competitors to focus on automation. SpaceX also has revolutionized their industry with the falcon 9 gorcing the industry to turn towards reusability and play catchup against a decade old launch platform. Currently China, Germany, France, the UK, Spain, the ESA, Japan, and Russia are all pursuing reusable rockets similar to the Falcon9. Also Relativity Space, Blue Origin, Arianespace, ULA, and Rocketlab are pursuing similar concepts. The falcon9 and dragon capsule like I stated previously have given the US self reliance for spaceflight again and have given them insane launch cadence capabilities at a very low cost per lb to orbit.
